We speak to former CIA officer, Ray McGovern, about U.S. violations of international law. WikiLeaks associate and centre of investigative journalism board member Joseph Farrell on Chelsea Manning. Plus Julian Assange responds on this show to CIA accusations.

President Obama has commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former US Army Intelligence Analyst serving 35-years for releasing classified information. Chelsea’s attorney Nancy Hollander, who spoke with President Obama’s counsel earlier today, confirms that “Chelsea will walk out of Fort Leavenworth a free woman in four months, on May 17th.”

Warning

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will address a news conference via video-link to mark the 10 year anniversary of the organization, announcing new initiatives and providing updates on publishing and legal events.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. This is Hedges speaking at an event hosted by the NYU Radical Film & Lecture Series entitled “National Security Overload: The War on Whistle-blowers, Journalism, and Privacy, and its Implications for Democracy”. Continue reading →

Edward Snowden is safe in Russia, but the fates of journalists who helped him and published his leaks are now of more concern for WikiLeaks, Julian Assange said in an exclusive interview with RT Spanish ‘Behind the News’ host Eva Golinger. Transcript: http://on.rt.com/ka76cl

US Journalist and activist Alexa O’Brien and Australian commentator Robert Manne are joined by video conference with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Guardian Journalist Glenn Greenwald and Chelsea Manning’s Lawyer David Coombs on stage at the Sydney Opera House (moderated by Bernard Keane of Crikey).

Powerful governments are waging a war on whistleblowers and those involved in publishing their material. Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, Manning has been convicted of espionage and is awaiting sentencing, and Julian Assange has been granted asylum by Ecuador but cannot step outside its London Embassy. It’s clear that the actions of whistleblowers and their publishers – ‘traitors’ as they are known to some – have come at a significant personal cost, and while the human drama of these stories is engrossing, the focus should be on the very real issues they’ve raised: surveillance, press freedom, privacy, secrecy, and accountability.

The roles of governments and corporations in the future of the internet, and their use and abuse of data, have been put under the global spotlight. In the wake of Manning, Snowden and Wikileaks, we finally have the scope to properly debate the need for government transparency and the trade-off between privacy and security.

Watch our expert panel discuss the implications of the war on whistleblowers for the main actors, and the consequences if that war is lost for the rest of us.

I sat in the courtroom all day on Wednesday as Bradley Manning’s trial wound its way to a tragic and demoralizing conclusion. I wanted to hear Eugene Debs, and instead I was trapped there, watching Socrates reach for the hemlock and gulp it down. Just a few minutes in and I wanted to scream or shout.

I don’t blame Bradley Manning for apologizing for his actions and effectively begging for the court’s mercy. He’s on trial in a system rigged against him. The commander in chief declared him guilty long ago. He’s been convicted. Continue reading →

Private first class Bradley Manning’s sentencing sessions continued on Wednesday in Fort Meade, Maryland. The soldier is convicted of one of the largest information leaks in US history and he finally spoke in his trial regarding his involvement in releasing sensitive information to the website WikiLeaks.

Bradley Manning personally delivered a statement as his trial, which could see him convicted for up to 90 years in prison, nears its end. He defended leaking 700,000 US diplomatic cables as an act of conscience and apologized for the damage he caused.

Operation: #OneMoreVote

The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, letting internet providers like Verizon and Comcast impose new fees, throttle bandwidth, and censor online content. But we can stop them by using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We need one more vote to win in the Senate, and we’re launching an Internet-wide push to get it.

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